With about 7 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.5% of the population, it is the third-most-spoken mother tongue in the country.[7] It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all the official languages of South Africa, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language.[n 5] It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa — the provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape — and the first language of 75.8% of Coloured South Africans (3.4 million people), 60.8% of White South Africans (2.7 million) and at 4.6% the second most spoken first-language among Asian South Africans (58,000). About 1.5% of black South Africans (600,000 people) speak it as their first language.[8] Large numbers of speakers of Bantu languages and English-speaking South Africans also speak it as their second language. It is taught in schools, with about 10.3 million second language learners. [9] One reason for the expansion of Afrikaans is its development in the public realm: it is used in newspapers, radio programs, TV, Grammar, and several translations of the Bible have been published since the first one was completed in 1933.[10]

In neighbouring Namibia, Afrikaans is widely spoken as a second language and used as lingua franca,[n 6] while as a native language it is spoken in 11% of households, mainly concentrated in the capital Windhoek and the southern regions of Hardap and Karas.[n 7] It is no longer considered an "official language" of Namibia, but rather a recognised regional language; in 1990, 25% of the population of Windhoek spoke Afrikaans at home.[11]

Estimates of the total number of Afrikaans-speakers range between 15 and 23 million.[n 8]

The Afrikaans language arose in the Dutch Cape Colony, through a gradual divergence from European Dutch dialects, during the course of the 18th century.[12][13] As early as the mid-18th century and as recently as the mid-20th century, Afrikaans was known in standard Dutch as a "kitchen language" (Afr. kombuistaal), lacking the prestige accorded, for example even by the educational system in Africa, to languages spoken outside Africa; other early epithets setting apart Kaaps Hollands ("Cape Dutch", i.e. Afrikaans) as putatively beneath official Dutch standards included geradbraakt/gebroken/onbeschaafd Hollands ("mutilated/broken/uncivilised Dutch"), as well as verkeerd Nederlands ("incorrect Dutch").[14][15] An estimated 90 to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin,[16][17][18] and there are few lexical differences between the two languages;[19] however, Afrikaans has a considerably more regular morphology,[20] grammar, and spelling.[21] There is a degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages,[20][22][23] particularly in written form.[21][24][25]

Beginning in about 1815, Afrikaans started to replace Malay as the language of instruction in Muslim schools in South Africa, written with the Arabic alphabet. Later, Afrikaans, now written with the Latin alphabet, started to appear in newspapers and political and religious works in around 1850. [31]

In 1875, a group of Afrikaans-speakers from the Cape formed the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaanders (Society for Real Afrikaners), [32]and published a number of books in Afrikaans including grammars, dictionaries, religious materials and histories. In 1925, Afrikaans was recognised by the South African government as a real language, rather than simply a slang version of Dutch proper. [33]

Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect in South Africa until the early 20th century, when it became recognised as a distinct language under South African law, alongside Standard Dutch, which it eventually replaced as an official language.[34] A relative majority of the first settlers whose descendants today are the Afrikaners were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands and Flanders),[35] though up to one-sixth of the community was also of French Huguenot origin, and another one-seventh from Germany.[36]

The workers and slaves who contributed to the development of Afrikaans were Asians (especially Malays) and Malagasys, as well as the Khoi, San, and Bantu peoples who also lived in the area. African creole people in the early 18th century — documented on the cases of Hendrik Bibault and patriarch Oude Ram — were the first to call themselves Afrikaner (Africans). Only much later in the second half of the 19th century did the Boers adopt this attribution, too.[37] The Khoi and mixed-race groups became collectively referred to as 'Coloureds'.[38]

Side view of the Pretoria Art Museum in Arcadia, Pretoria, with Afrikaans language sign.

The linguist Paul Roberge suggested the earliest 'truly Afrikaans' texts are doggerel verse from 1795 and a dialogue transcribed by a Dutch traveller in 1825. Printed material among the Afrikaners at first used only standard European Dutch. By the mid-19th century, more and more were appearing in Afrikaans, which was very much still regarded as a set of regional dialects.

In 1861, L.H. Meurant published his Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar ("Conversation between Claus Truthsayer and John Doubter"), which is considered by some to be the first authoritative Afrikaans text.[citation needed]Abu Bakr Effendi also compiled his Arabic AfrikaansIslamic instruction book between 1862 and 1869, although this was only published and printed in 1877. The first Afrikaans grammars and dictionaries were published in 1875 by the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners ('Society for Real Afrikaners') in Cape Town.[citation needed]

A major landmark in the development of the language was the translation of the whole Bible into Afrikaans. Before this, most Cape Dutch-Afrikaans speakers had to rely on the Dutch Statenbijbel. This Statenvertaling had its origins with the Synod of Dordrecht of 1618 and was thus in an archaic form of Dutch. This was hard for Dutch and Cape Dutch speakers to understand, and increasingly unintelligible for Afrikaans speakers.

C. P. Hoogehout, Arnoldus Pannevis, and Stephanus Jacobus du Toit were the first Afrikaans Bible translators. Important landmarks in the translation of the Scriptures were in 1878 with C. P. Hoogehout's translation of the Evangelie volgens Markus (Gospel of Mark, lit. Gospel according to Mark); however, this translation was never published. The manuscript is to be found in the South African National Library, Cape Town.

The first official translation of the entire Bible into Afrikaans was in 1933 by J. D. du Toit, E. E. van Rooyen, J. D. Kestell, H. C. M. Fourie, and BB Keet.[41][42] This monumental work established Afrikaans as 'n suiwer en oordentlike taal, that is "a pure and proper language" for religious purposes, especially amongst the deeply Calvinist Afrikaans religious community that previously had been rather sceptical of a Bible translation that varied from the Dutch version that they were used to.

In 1983 a fresh translation marked the 50th anniversary of the 1933 version and provided a much-needed revision. The final editing of this edition was done by E. P. Groenewald, A. H. van Zyl, P. A. Verhoef, J. L. Helberg and W. Kempen.

Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Afrikaans at home.

0–20%

20–40%

40–60%

60–80%

80–100%

Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in South Africa: density of Afrikaans home-language speakers.

<1 /km²

1–3 /km²

3–10 /km²

10–30 /km²

30–100 /km²

100–300 /km²

300–1000 /km²

1000–3000 /km²

>3000 /km²

Some state that instead of "Afrikaners" which refers to an ethnic group, the terms Afrikaanses or "Afrikaanssprekendes" (lit. Afrikaans speakers) should be used for people of any ethnic origin who speak Afrikaans. Linguistic identity has not yet established which terms shall prevail, and all three are used in common parlance.[43]

Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in Namibia.

Afrikaans is also widely spoken in Namibia. Before independence, Afrikaans had equal status with German as an official language. Since independence in 1990, Afrikaans has had constitutional recognition as a national, but not official, language.[44][45] There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among Zimbabwe's white minority, as most have left the country since 1980. Afrikaans was also a medium of instruction for schools in BophuthatswanaBantustan.[46]

Many South Africans living and working in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Kuwait are also Afrikaans-speaking. They have access to Afrikaans websites, news sites such as Nuus24.com and Sake24, and radio broadcasts over the web, such as those from Radio Sonder Grense and Radio Pretoria.

Afrikaans has been influential in the development of South African English. Many Afrikaans loanwords have found their way into South African English, such as 'bakkie' ("pickup truck"), 'braai' ("barbecue"), 'naartjie' ("tangerine"), 'tekkies' (AE "sneakers"/BE "trainers"/CE "runners"). A few words in standard English are derived from Afrikaans, such as 'aardvark' (lit. "earth pig"), 'trek' ("pioneering journey", in Afrikaans lit. "pull" but used also for "migrate"), "spoor" ("animal track"), "veld" ("Southern African grassland" in Afrikaans lit. "field"), "commando" from Afrikaans "kommando" meaning small fighting unit, "boomslang" ("tree snake") and apartheid ("segregation"; more accurately "apartness" or "the state or condition of being apart").

In 1976, secondary school pupils in Soweto began a rebellion in response to the government's decision that Afrikaans be used as the language of instruction for half the subjects taught in non-White schools (with English continuing for the other half). Although English is the mother tongue of only 8.2% of the population, it is the language most widely understood, and the second language of a majority of South Africans.[47] Afrikaans is more widely spoken than English in the Northern and Western Cape provinces, several hundred kilometres from Soweto. The Black community's opposition to Afrikaans and preference for continuing English instruction was underlined when the government rescinded the policy one month after the uprising: 96% of Black schools chose English (over Afrikaans or native languages) as the language of instruction.[48]

Under South Africa's Constitution of 1996, Afrikaans remains an official language, and has equal status to English and nine other languages. The new policy means that the use of Afrikaans is now often reduced in favour of English, or to accommodate the other official languages. In 1996, for example, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reduced the amount of television airtime in Afrikaans, while South African Airways dropped its Afrikaans name Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens from its livery. Similarly, South Africa's diplomatic missions overseas now only display the name of the country in English and their host country's language, and not in Afrikaans.

In spite of these moves, the language has remained strong, and Afrikaans newspapers and magazines continue to have large circulation figures. Indeed, the Afrikaans-language general-interest family magazine Huisgenoot has the largest readership of any magazine in the country.[49] In addition, a pay-TV channel in Afrikaans called KykNet was launched in 1999, and an Afrikaans music channel, MK (Musiek kanaal) (lit. 'Music Channel'), in 2005. A large number of Afrikaans books are still published every year, mainly by the publishers Human & Rousseau, Tafelberg Uitgewers, Struik, and Protea Boekhuis.

Afrikaans has two monuments erected in its honour. The first was erected in Burgersdorp, South Africa, in 1893, and the second, nowadays better-known Afrikaans Language Monument (Afrikaanse Taalmonument), was built in Paarl, South Africa, in 1975.

Modern Dutch and Afrikaans share over 90 per cent of their vocabulary. Afrikaans speakers are able to learn Dutch within a comparatively short time. Native Dutch speakers pick up written Afrikaans even more quickly, due to its simplified grammar, whereas understanding spoken Afrikaans might need more effort. Afrikaans speakers can learn Dutch pronunciation with little training. This has enabled Dutch and Belgian companies to outsource their call centre operations to South Africa.[51]

Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a loss of preferential treatment by the government for Afrikaans, in terms of education, social events, media (TV and radio), and general status throughout the country, given that it now shares its place as official language with ten other languages. Nevertheless, Afrikaans remains more prevalent in the media – radio, newspapers and television[56] – than any of the other official languages, except English. More than 300 book titles[clarification needed] in Afrikaans are published annually.[57] South African census figures suggest a growing number of speakers in all 9 provinces, a total of 6.85 million in 2011 compared to 5.98 million a decade earlier.[58] The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) project that a growing majority will be Coloured Afrikaans speakers.[59] Afrikaans speakers enjoy higher employment rates than other South African language groups, though half a million remain unemployed.[58]

Despite the challenges of demotion and emigration that it faces in South Africa, the Afrikaans vernacular remains competitive, being popular in DSTV pay channels and several internet sites, while generating high newspaper and music CD sales. A resurgence in Afrikaans popular music since the late 1990s has invigorated the language, especially among a younger generation of South Africans. A recent trend is the increased availability of pre-school educational CDs and DVDs. Such media also prove popular with the extensive Afrikaans-speaking expatriate communities who seek to retain language proficiency in a household context.

After years of slumber, Afrikaans language cinema is showing signs of new vigour. The 2007 film Ouma se slim kind, the first full-length Afrikaans movie since Paljas of 1998, is seen as the dawn of a new era in Afrikaans cinema. Several short films have been created and more feature-length movies, such as Poena is Koning and Bakgat (both in 2008) have been produced, besides the 2011 Afrikaans-language film Skoonheid, which was the first Afrikaans film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. The film Platteland was also released in 2011.[60]

Afrikaans seems to be returning to the SABC. SABC3 announced early in 2009 that it would increase Afrikaans programming due to the "growing Afrikaans-language market and [their] need for working capital as Afrikaans advertising is the only advertising that sells in the current South African television market". In April 2009, SABC3 started screening several Afrikaans-language programmes.[61] Further latent support for the language derives from its de-politicised image in the eyes of younger-generation South Africans, who less and less often view it as "the language of the oppressor".[citation needed] Indeed, there is a groundswell movement within Afrikaans to be inclusive, and to promote itself along with the other indigenous official languages.

Following early dialectical studies of Afrikaans, it was theorised that three main historical dialects probably existed after the Great Trek in the 1830s. These dialects are the Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape dialects.[63] Northern Cape dialect may have resulted from contact between Dutch settlers and the Khoi-Khoi people between the Great Karoo and the Kunene, and Eastern Cape dialect between the Dutch and the Xhosa. Remnants of these dialects still remain in present-day Afrikaans, although the standardising effect of Standard Afrikaans has contributed to a great levelling of differences in modern times.[citation needed]

There is also a prison cant, known as soebela or sombela, which is based on Afrikaans, yet heavily influenced by Zulu. This language is used as a secret language in prison and is taught to initiates.[64]

The term Kaapse Afrikaans ("Cape Afrikaans") is sometimes erroneously used to refer to the entire Western Cape dialect; it is more commonly used for a particular sociolect spoken in the Cape Peninsula of South Africa. Kaapse Afrikaans was once spoken by all population groups. However, it became increasingly restricted to the Cape Colouredethnic group in Cape Town and environs.

Kaapse Afrikaans preserves some features more similar to Dutch than to Afrikaans.[65]

The 1st person singular pronoun "ik" as in Dutch as opposed to Afrikaans "ek"

The diminutive endings "tje", pronounced as in Dutch and not as /kiː/ as in Afrikaans.

The use of the form "seg", cf. Dutch "zegt" as opposed to Afrikaans "sê"

Kaapse Afrikaans has some other features not typically found in Afrikaans.

The pronunciation of "j", normally /j/ as in Dutch is often a /dz/. This is the strongest feature of Kaapse Afrikaans.

The insertion of /j/ after /s/, /t/ and /k/ when followed by /e/, e.g. "kjen" as opposed to Afrikaans "ken".

Kaapse Afrikaans is also characterised by much code-switching between English and Afrikaans, especially in the inner-city and lower socio-economic status areas of Cape Town.

The term Oranjeriverafrikaans ("Afrikaans of the Orange River") is sometimes erroneously used to refer to the Northern Cape dialect; it is more commonly used for the regional peculiarities of standard Afrikaans spoken in the Upington/Orange River wine district of South Africa.

Some of the characteristics of Oranjerivierafrikaans are the plural form -goed (Ma-goed, meneergoed), variant pronunciation such as in kjerk (Church) and gjeld (money) and the ending -se, which indicates possession.

In Afrikaans grammar, there is no distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have':

infinitive form

present indicative form

Dutch

English

German

wees

is

zijn / wezen

be

sein

hê

het

hebben

have

haben

In addition, verbs do not conjugate differently depending on the subject. For example,

Afrikaans

Dutch

English

German

ek is

ik ben

I am

ich bin

jy/u is

jij/u bent

you are (sing.)

du bist

hy/sy/dit is

hij/zij/het is

he/she/it is

er/sie/es ist

ons is

wij zijn

we are

wir sind

julle is

jullie zijn

you are (plur.)

ihr seid

hulle is

zij zijn

they are

sie sind

Only a handful of Afrikaans verbs have a preterite, namely the auxiliary wees ("to be"), the modal verbs, and the verb dink ("to think"). The preterite of mag ("may") is rare in contemporary Afrikaans.

Afrikaans

Dutch

English

present

past

present

past

present

past

ek is

ek was

ik ben

ik was

I am

I was

ek kan

ek kon

ik kan

ik kon

I can

I could

ek moet

ek moes

ik moet

ik moest

I must

I had to

ek wil

ek wou

ik wil

ik wilde/wou

I want

I wanted

ek sal

ek sou

ik zal

ik zou

I will

I would

ek mag

(ek mog)

ik mag

ik mocht

I may

I was allowed

ek dink

ek dog

ik denk

ik dacht

I think

I thought

All other verbs use the perfect tense (hê + past participle) for the past. Therefore there is no distinction in Afrikaans between I drank and I have drunk. (Also in colloquial German, the past tense is also widely replaced with the perfect.)

Afrikaans

Dutch

English

ek het gedrink

ik dronk

I drank

ek het gedrink

ik heb gedronken

I have drunk

When telling a longer story, Afrikaans speakers usually avoid the perfect and simply use the present tense instead (as is possible, but less common, in English as well).

A particular feature of Afrikaans is its use of the double negative; it is classified in Afrikaans as ontkennende vorm and is something that is absent from the other West Germanic standard languages. For example,

Both French and San origins have been suggested for double negation in Afrikaans. While double negation is still found in Low Franconian dialects in West-Flanders and in some "isolated" villages in the center of the Netherlands (i.e. Garderen), it takes a different form, which is not found in Afrikaans. The following is an example:

The -ne was the Middle Dutch way to negate but it has been suggested that since -ne became highly non-voiced, nie or niet was needed to complement the -ne. With time the -ne disappeared in most Dutch dialects.

The double negative construction has been fully grammaticalized in standard Afrikaans and its proper use follows a set of fairly complex rules as the examples below show:

The Dutch word het ("it" in English) does not correspond to het in Afrikaans; the Dutch word heb corresponds to het in Afrikaans.

Afrikaans

Dutch

English

het

heb, hebt, heeft, hebben

have, has

die

de, het

the

dit

het

it

A notable exception to this is the use of the negating grammar form that coincides with negating the English present participle. In this case there is only a single negation.

Afrikaans

Dutch

English

Hy is in die hospitaal, maar hy eet nie.

Hij is in het ziekenhuis/hospitaal, maar hij eet niet.

He is in [the] hospital, though he eats not.

Certain words in Afrikaans arise due to grammar. For example, moet nie, which literally means "must not", usually becomes moenie; although one does not have to write or say it like this, virtually all Afrikaans speakers will change the two words to moenie in the same way as do not shifts to don't in English.

There are many parallels to the Dutch orthography conventions and those used for Afrikaans. There are 26 letters.

In Afrikaans, many consonants are dropped from the earlier Dutch spelling. For example, slechts ('only') in Dutch becomes slegs in Afrikaans. For example, Afrikaans and some Dutch dialects make no distinction between /s/ and /z/, having merged the latter into the former; while the word for "south" is written "zuid" in Dutch, it is spelled "suid" in Afrikaans to represent this merger. Similarly, the Dutch digraph "ĳ", normally pronounced as /ɛi/, is written as "y", except where it replaces the Dutch suffix–lijk which is pronounced as /lœk/ or /lik/, as in waarschijnlijk > waarskynlik.

Another difference is the indefinite article, 'n in Afrikaans and een in Dutch. 'A book' is 'n boek in Afrikaans, whereas it is either een boek or 'n boek in Dutch. This 'n is usually pronounced as just a weak vowel, [ə].

The diminutive suffix in Afrikaans is "-tjie", whereas in Dutch it is "-tje", hence a "bit" is bietjie in Afrikaans and beetje in Dutch.

The letters "c", "q", "x", and "z" occur almost exclusively in borrowings from French, English, Greek and Latin. This is usually because words that had "c" and "ch" in the original Dutch are spelled with "k" and "g", respectively, in Afrikaans. Similarly original "qu" and "x" are spelt "kw" and "ks" respectively. For example "ekwatoriaal" instead of "equatoriaal", and "ekskuus" instead of "excuus".

The vowels with diacritics in non-loanword Afrikaans are: "á, é, è, ê, ë, í, î, ï, ó, ô, ú, û, ý". Diacritics are ignored when alphabetising, though they are still important, even when typing the diacritic forms may be difficult. For example "geëet" instead of the 3 e's alongside each other: geeet which can never occur in Afrikaans or "sê" which translates to say, whereas "se" is a possessive form.

A few short words in Afrikaans take initial apostrophes. In modern Afrikaans, these words are always written in lower case (except if the entire line is uppercase), and if they occur at the beginning of a sentence, the next word is capitalised. Three examples of such apostrophed words are 'k, 't, 'n. The last (the indefinite article) is the only apostrophed word that is common in modern written Afrikaans, since the other examples are shortened versions of other words (ek and het respectively) and are rarely found outside of a poetic context.,[69]

The apostrophe and the following letter are regarded as two separate characters, and are never written using a single glyph, although a single character variant of the indefinite article appears in Unicode, ŉ.

tjank ('whine like a dog' or 'to cry incessantly'). The former pronunciation occurs at the beginning of a word and the latter in "-tjie"

u

/œ/, /yː/

kus ('coast' or 'kiss'), skadu ('shade'). The latter is rare and most commonly found as the word u (formal 'you')

û

/œː/

brûe ('bridges')

ü

-

Found in words such as reünie ('reunion'). The diaeresis indicates the start of a new syllable, thus 'ü' is pronounced the same 'u', except when found in proper nouns and surnames from German, like Müller.

Afrikaans is a very centralised language, meaning that most of the vowels are pronounced in a very centralised (or schwa-like) way. Although there are many different dialects and accents, the transcription would be fairly standard.

It should be noted that in the Dutch language the word "Afrikaans" means African, in the general sense. Consequently Afrikaans is commonly but incorrectly denoted as "Zuid-Afrikaans". This ambiguity also exists in Afrikaans itself and is either resolved in the context of its usage, or by using "Afrikaan" for an African person, and "Afrika-" in the adjective sense.

The following Afrikaans sentences, which have the same meaning in English, are also written identically though their pronunciation differs:

^Afrikaans is spoken in 11 percent of Namibian households; see Namibian Population Census 2001. In the Hardap Region it is spoken in 44% of households, in the Karas Region by 40% of households, in the Khomas Region by 24% of households; see Census Indicators, 2001 and click through to "Regional indicators".

^What follows are estimations. Afrikaans has 16.3 million speakers; see de Swaan 2001, p. 216. Afrikaans has a total of 16 million speakers; see Machan 2009, p. 174. About 9 million people speak Afrikaans as a second or third language; see Alant 2004, p. 45, Proost 2006, p. 402. Afrikaans has over 5 million native speakers and 15 million second language speakers; see Réguer 2004, p. 20. Afrikaans has about 6 million native and 16 million second language speakers; see Domínguez & López 1995, p. 340. In South Africa, over 23 million people speak Afrikaans, of which a third are first-language speakers; see Page & Sonnenburg 2003, p. 7. L2 "Black Afrikaans" is spoken, with different degrees of fluency, by an estimated 15 million; see Stell 2008-11, p. 1.

^Oranje FM, Radio Sonder Grense, Jacaranda FM, Radio Pretoria, Rapport, Beeld, Die Burger, Die Son, Afrikaans news is run everyday; the PRAAG website is a web-based news service. On pay channels it is provided as second language on all sports, Kyknet